Lot Details
Lot 55
Chelsea Porcelain 'Hans Sloane' Botanical Plate
Circa 1757, iron-red anchor mark
Boldly painted with a stem of blue budding and blossoming cinquefoil flowers, the petals spotted towards the turquoise stamen and with broad heart-shaped leaves, the border with two brightly colored butterflies in flight, within shaped brown line rims.
Diameter 9 inches.
Provenance:
Sir James Williams-Drummond, Bt., of Hawthornden, Midlothian.
Sotheby's, London, 23 February 1971, lot 11.
Literature:
Sotheby's Year in Review, 1970-71, p. 392.
Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1713) was the physician to Queen Anne, a botanist, an adventurer and a collector of rare plants. The earliest documented reference to the decorative term 'Hans Sloane' in conjunction with Chelsea porcelain is from an advertisement in Faulkner's Dublin Journal of July 1-4, 1758, announcing `... table plates, soup plates and desart plates enamelled from Sir Hans Sloan's plants.'
Many of the botanical specimen on Chelsea wares can be traced to quasi-faithful adaptations of the illustrations in Philip Miller's Gardener's Dictionary of 1754 and Figures of the most Beautiful, Useful and Uncommon Plants described in the Gardener's Dictionary depicting specimens from the Chelsea Physic Garden, published in 1760, and from Plantae Selectae Quarum Imagines, after Georg Dionysius Ehret, published in 1750-1753. Even the insects depicted often represent species instrumental in fertilizing the plant. A 333-volume set containing the 800-dried species collection by Sir Hans Sloane are held in the Botanical department of the Natural History Museum, South Kensington.
Comparison examples can be found in Elizabeth Adams, Chelsea Porcelain, cl. pl. XII and p. 111, pl. 92; John Austin, Chelsea Porcelain at Williamsburg, pp. 99 and 93, nos. 78-82; Yvonne Hackenbroch, Chelsea and Other English Porcelain, Pottery and Enamel in the Irwin Untermyer Collection, pl. 18, fig. 49. For four botanical plates offered as one lot, see Christie's, New York, 21 - 22 October 2010, lot 37.
C Estate of Sarah Belk Gambrell
Additional Notes & Condition Report
Any condition statement is given as a courtesy to a client, is an opinion and should not be treated as a statement of fact and Doyle New York shall have no responsibility for any error or omission. Please contact the specialist department to request further information or additional images that may be available.
No condition report? Click here to request one.